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Have you been following the heated debate on Health Care reform? You think that is a Challenge, enter Immigration Reform 2010 debate. The Immigration system is broken, and in order to fix it….well who has the solution. The Yakima Herald-Republic reports:

From our vantage point, any immigration reform is dependent on making sure the border between the U.S. and Mexico is secure. It also requires tougher enforcement laws against illegal immigrants and employers who knowingly hire them.

In the face of rising unemployment, Napolitano said the enhanced enforcement will actually protect American workers from being displaced by lower-paid, easily exploited illegal immigrants and will help the economy “as these immigrants become full-paying taxpayers.”
The issue of border security drew immediate criticism from some Republicans, who point to a significant gap in physical impediments to entering the country illegally.

“How can they claim that enforcement is done when there are more than 400 open miles of border with Mexico?” asked Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

Napolitano argued that security has improved, with more than 600 miles of border fence now in place and the Border Patrol having been increased to 20,000 officers.

Immigration reform is as important a topic here in Central Washington as is health care reform, perhaps even greater. With Hispanics accounting for more than 40 percent of Yakima County’s population, much is at stake. Guest-worker details in any reform initiative will be especially critical for the Yakima Valley’s agriculture industry, which estimates that from 50 percent to 70 percent of its farm-worker labor pool is here illegally.

The failure of President George W. Bush and Congress to pass reform in 2007 underscores how difficult it will be for the Democrats under Obama to succeed in navigating the thicket of opposition that comes with any measure offering legalization provisions.

If the White House can’t satisfy that overriding concern, immigration reform will never be taken seriously. I couldn’t agree more.

Some surprising news from our border, according to the LA Times, arrests of illegal immigrants along the California-Mexico border declined 25% this year as a weak economy and bolstered enforcement efforts appear to be discouraging treks north.

The downward trend is evident across the Southwest border as apprehensions fell to levels not seen since the early 1970s. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested 556,000 people last year, 152,200 of them in California, according to statistics released for the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Apprehension levels, considered the best available indicator of illegal crossing activity, have fluctuated for decades, but have steadily declined since 2000, when there were 1.6 million arrests.

Federal officials say the declining numbers show that increased enforcement, including fencing, staffing and infrastructure, are affecting migrant flows. Showing progress in securing the border is crucial for the Obama administration’s efforts to garner support for immigration reform legislation. We know that without an enforcement plan, any reform is bound to fail.

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Yesterday was the deadline for several Vermont farms to turn over paperwork on their employees to Homeland Security. Last week, as part of a nationwide federal crackdown, authorities handed out subpoenas to five Vermont businesses, at least four of them were dairy farms. The goal is to catch workers who have provided illegal documents.

The crackdown surprised the Governor. He says the solution is not to target farms, but a new visa program, so farmers can legally hire the help they need year round since not enough Vermonters will do the work.

Read more here….